Hello I am new to the forum been looking for a while for a project vette and finally came across a good project car and am looking for some tips and tricks from you guys. I found a 1985 corvette 4+3 manual trans not to far away and the price was right so I picked it up but it definitely needs some attention. Has 140k miles on it but had only 25k on jasper engine and trans. It has a serious vibration under acceleration. Once she made the drive home I got it up in the air and it appears it needs a set of half shaft u joints and drive shaft u joints they appear very dry rotted. Also a lot of grease and dirt on the rear differential looks like a leak from the front pinion seal. I have worked on quite a few cars but never any vettes. Changing all the ujoints fixing the pinion seal leak and a set or rear wheel bearings do you think this will fix my vibration issue? I can tell the vibration is coming from the rear of the car. Any tips and tricks are appreciated lots of experienced people on this forum can't wait to hear what you guys have to say. Can't wait to start wrenching on it.


Thanks
Matt




Rear diff leak





Half shaft




Full car





Next to the 75

 

as i just did mine on the 85, driver side rear.

there are very good videos on YouTube to guide you through all of this. You will need a basic socket and ratchet set with the swivel adapter. You will need a hub puller I got a really inexpensive one for $10 and it worked great. But really just go to YouTube and find the video do a search for Corvette C-4 rear hub install. you cannot go wrong.

but my first question on the hub would be, do you really need one? I think if you do not have any motion in the uptown or 12 o'clock to 6 o'clock positioning, then you may not need one. Mine was visibly loose when moving the wheel up-and-down from 12 o'clock to 6 o'clock. I do know that vibration can be caused from a wheel hub but if you cannot find any movement in the hub but you can find movement in your U joints then you might as well skip the hub swap and first do the U joints.

if you do the rear wheel hub, remove the parking brake cable out of the cable hanger which is bolted onto the lower disc caliper. You will understand what I mean when you get back there. Use pliers and a flathead screwDriver to squish the metal flange and pole from the other side so the parking brake cable goes out through the hanger hole. That way you can get at the lower caliper bolt with a basic ratchet toolset. I cannot help with any you joints because I have not fixed any of those yet I would recommend getting the FSM as this covers these basic procedures. That is, if you're going to do more than just swap the rear hub,because there are plenty of guided how to use in swapping a rear hub on YouTube. Good luck! Make sure you report back

ps, sorry if the text sometimes appears to be mumbo-jumbo with weird words or spellings in certain areas, I use Siri on my iPhone to write all of these messages to save me heaps and heaps of time sometimes she gets the words a little mixed up?

 

Thanks for the resonse I get a FSM and do all the ujoints and pinion seal and get the diff topped off with gear lube and go from there. Any suggestions on ujoint brands and where to purchase them?

 

Spicer. 1310x for the drive shaft, 1350x for the axle shafts, IIRC.

Find a Spicer dealer in your area.